Exactly at midnight

God enters the garden
and all the accusing angels

stop
accusing . . .

And the ape
of God enters as well
with his delicate off-spring
(agile, long-tailed, pre-
hensile) who scale God
to prop up his shoulders like
puptents, and camp there: pri-
vates, epaulettes, sprightly pet
nephews. One of the
smallest is hugging God's
head: the wee leather box of his
body on God's brow could be
a phylactery housing
daleths: half-
doors, tota
mercy. And these

looping his neck: chimp-
charms, live amulets, limber
familiars, who, screeching,
swing round to ride top-
rung ( . . . God glides
like a ladder on wheels
through the garden . . . ) to
pickpluckpinch (nimbly)
with such fine-boned fingers:
these drupes-becomes-balls
(blue-green) from tall, well,
shrubs, really—to eat
which they do, as fast as they
hull (sarcocarp/endocarp/carp-
less): these grooved beads
enter their bodies
and exit:

whole, un-
digested.

And now
the accused

creep out from the cool deep
green of the garden
to gather with twig brooms
this (scat)ter
down God's front from
(unstinting) passages for the-
already-reaping-on-all-
fours ( . . . it's happy hour
here in the garden: no angel
aiming its index at . . . ): finger-
rakers of droppings (now banked, now
burning): o dark roast . . .
(turn/grind/seethe/
steep . . . ) for
the accusative (us)
who can't sleep, who make

monkey coffee
at midnight
(exactly)

and drink it.

Copyright © 2003 Margaret Aho All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission